D. H. Lawrence

In 1912, he met and fell desperately in love with Frieda Weekley, the wife of Ernest Weekley, his former modern languages professor at University College. He persuaded Frieda to leave her husband and children and come with him. Frieda eventually obtained a divorce from her husband and married Lawrence in 1914.

D. H. Lawrence was a man of delicate health who suffered from frequent bouts of illnesses. He became ill with tuberculosis in the late 1920s and died from complications from the disease on 2 March 1930, aged 44.

In 1981, ‘Priest of Love’, a film based on the non-fiction biography of Lawrence of the same name starring Ian McKellen as the writer was released.

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was born on 11 September 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England. His father Arthur John Lawrence was a coal miner, and his mother, Lydia Lawrence, worked in the lace-making industry to supplement the family income. He had three siblings.

His mother was an educated woman who instilled in the young boy a love for literature. A good student, he attended Beauvale Board School from 1891 until 1898. He won a County Council scholarship to Nottingham High School from where he graduated in 1901.

D. H. Lawrence started working as a junior clerk at Haywood's surgical appliances factory in 1901 but left the job after three months following a severe bout of pneumonia. After recovering he began working as a student teacher at the British School in Eastwood in 1902. Eventually he became a teacher and received a teaching certificate from University College, Nottingham, in 1908.

Lawrence took a teaching post at an elementary school in the London suburb of Croydon. By this time he had also started writing, and received a big break when his friend Jessie Chambers managed to get some of his poems published in the ‘English Review’ in 1909. The publishers at the ‘English Review’ took a liking to Lawrence and helped him in getting his first novel ‘The White Peacock’ published by William Heinemann, in 1911.

In November 1911, he quit his teaching job in order to become a full-time writer. His second novel, ‘The Trespasser’, was out in 1912. The story was inspired by the experiences of his colleague, Helen Corke, and her tragic love affair with a married man that ended with his suicide.

He brought out the novel ‘Sons and Lovers’, in 1913, which came to be regarded as his first masterpiece. It was a highly autobiographical story of an aspiring artist named Paul Moore and his complicated relationship with his mother who becomes too attached to him.

The period of the World War I proved to be very distressing for the writer who had by now gained notoriety because of his controversial writing. Married by now to a German woman, Lawrence and his wife were not even allowed to leave the country; they were trapped in England and struggled to make ends meet. Despite the numerous difficulties, he managed to publish four volumes of poetry between 1916 and 1919.

His novel ‘Sons and Lovers’, considered scandalous at the time of its publication in 1913 is now placed ninth on the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. Regarded a masterpiece by literary critics, it is counted among D. H. Lawrence’s finest achievements.

His best known—and most notorious—novel was ‘Lady Chatterley's Lover’ which described in explicit details the sexual affair between a working class man and an upper class woman. The book explored a wide range of different types of relationships in the context of the prevailing social customs in England in the first half of the 20th century.